Islandora Online will take the form of four online events, around four hours each, focused on a specific topic of interest to the islandora community, Each event will have a mix of presentations, panel discussion, and small group discussion, with some optional “social” components to break up the time. Regular sessions should be roughly 20 minutes (plus time for questions), Panels run for around 40 minutes, and Lightning Talks are five minutes each.

Our website has been overhauled in a big way. We have moved to Drupal 8, changed our look, and shifted content around to make it easier to find the Islandora information and resources that you need. Can't find something you expect from the old site? Let us know and we'll get it fixed.

We've made the move to Drupal 8 and taken it as an opportunity for a redesign. We'd like your feedback so we can continue to improve. Please let us know if you had trouble finding anything, or if you have any other comments to share, by taking this brief survey.

The Islandora Foundation is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Islandora 8 version 1.1.0! After the last release, we polled the community for the most wanted features for Islandora 8. This release adds several of the most requested features and enhancements from the polling results:

Paged Content

Order sequences of content using a weight field

Generate IIIF manifests for presenting paged content

View paged content with the Openseadragon viewer

Extracted Text

Extract text from both TIFFs and PDFs

Extracted text can be indexed in Solr

FITS Derivatives

FITS XML is generated for new file uploads

Versioning

Drupal revisions create Memento versions in Fedora

OAI-PMH Endpoint

Configurable using views

Better Search / Discovery

Default configuration for search indexing

Default configuration for faceting

If you would like to try Islandora 8 v1.1.0 for yourself, we have three options for you:

If you are already running Islandora 8 v1.0.0, an example script for updating to 1.1.0 can be found here.

This software is made possible by volunteer contributions from community members and organizations. The fact that this many major features have all been developed and contributed on a voluntary basis shows just how talented, amazing, and dedicated our community is! We truly could not do this without you. We’d like to thank each and every one of the people who have helped us deliver this software:

Drupal is the backbone of Islandora, and our community has benefited immeasurably from the work of the larger Drupal community. We would like to encourage our users to consider joining us in supporting the Drupal Association, as individual members. For the rest of this month, your contribution can have extra impact, as individual donations/memberships are being matched 3:1 by Drupal founder Dries Buytaert and his spouse Vanessa Buytaert, and a coalition of Drupal business, through the end of April: https://www.drupal.org/association/drupal-cares-challenge

Islandora Quick Lessons are short (<5 minute) videos demonstrating how to use Islandora 8 in bite-sized bits. We're posting new videos daily on the Islandora YouTube channel. Popular lessons so far include:

In light of the unprecedented times that we’re all going through, we wanted to share some information and resources for the Islandora community. The Islandora Foundation itself has always been a virtual office, with both employees working from home and all meetings taking place online, so we’ve been very fortunate in being able to continue with the business of Islandora more or less as we always have. Much of our community, however, has made this transition very recently and very suddenly.

Isolation keeps us and our communities healthy, but it’s... isolating. We’d like to help our community to feel a little more connected, in whatever small ways we can. We’re leaving space at the start of our community meetings for folks to check in and chat. The door is also open in Islandora Slack, including a #watercooler channel if you just want to share. If you’re working from home and finding gaps in your day from paused projects or other work that can’t be done right now, we’d be happy to help you fill those gaps with open source engagement or learning opportunities:

The Islandora Foundation is seeking Expressions of Interest to host the 2021 Islandora Conference (Islandoracon).

This will be the fourth iteration of our community’s largest gathering. Previous Islandoracon locations include:

2015: University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, PE

2017: MacMaster University, Hamilton, ON

2019: Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC

Deadline for submissions: July 31, 2020

Requirements:

The host must cover the cost of the venue (whether by offering your own space or paying the rent on a venue). All other costs (transportation, catering, supplies, etc) will be covered by the Islandora Foundation. The venue must have:

Space for up to 150 attendees total, with room for at least two simultaneous tracks, and additional pre-conference workshop facilities, with appropriate A/V equipment. Laptop-friendly seating a requirement.

On-site quiet room or sensory friendly room (a small room away from the bustle of the conference) for attendee use.

A location convenient to an airport and hotels (or other accommodations, such as student housing)

A local planning committee willing to help with organization

A location that is accessible and inclusive. This includes, but isn’t limited to:

Available gender neutral or trans-friendly bathrooms.

Available accessible and/or family bathrooms.

Catering options that can accommodate different dietary needs.

Rooms and entrances that are accessible for those with limited mobility

The host is not responsible for developing the Islandoracon program, pre-conference events, sponsorships, or social events.

The EOI must include:

The name of the institution(s)

Primary contact (with email)

Proposed location, with a brief description of amenities, travel, and other considerations that would make it a good location for the conference.

A proposed time of year. We do not have a fixed schedule, so if there is a season when your venue is particularly attractive, the conference dates can move accordingly.

The location will be selected by Islandora staff in consultation with the Islandora Coordinating Committee.

The Islandora Foundation is committed to being a welcoming and inclusive space for our entire community. As such, Islandoracon will not be held in a location where local laws may be in conflict with our Code of Conduct.

The Islandora 8 committers have nominated and approved Eli Zoller to join the crew, and we are pleased to announced that he has accepted!

Eli is a recent newcomer to Islandora, but in his short tenure has managed to provide the upcoming versioning features in Islandora 8 v1.1.0. While working for Arizona State University, he has engaged the project in countless ways. Bug reporting, bug fixing, testing, documentation... you name it. He's even got a PR out there for the Mirador viewer :)

We are very lucky to have him focusing his intellect on Islandora 8, and we are very happy to have him joining the project in this new capacity. Further details of the rights and responsibilities of being a Islandora committer can be found here.

The Islandora 8 committers have asked Alan Stanley to join their ranks and we are pleased to announced that he has accepted.

Alan has a long history with Islandora, as a developer, instructor, mentor, and all-around great member of our community. Alan's recent contributions to Islandora 8 include support for ORCID integration, OCR text extraction, and FITS metadata — and stay tuned for some upcoming improvements to content modeling, courtesy of Alan's work at UPEI.

We are extremely grateful for all of the time and effort that Alan has put into Islandora 8, and we couldn't be more excited to have him on board!

Further details of the rights and responsibilities of being a Islandora committer can be found here: https://github.com/Islandora/islandora/wiki/Islandora-Committers